Friday, November 19, 2010

I wasn't always Pearl North. That's right. It's not my real name. I'm really Anne Harris and I wrote three science fiction novels for adults before turning to YA and adopting the pen name Pearl North. People tend to have a lot of questions about this. Why did I take on a pseudonym? Why did I switch to YA? And the question I get the most: How did you come up with the name Pearl North?

As to why I started writing YA, that was a total gimme. I've always had adolescent characters in my books, frequently as main characters, and when I decided to write a book about a teenage girl living in a library so vast people sometimes get lost in it and never come out again, well, that was an idea that pretty much screamed YA to me, and my editor agreed. It was at that point that he asked me if I'd be willing to take on a pseudonym, and the reason is pretty unglamorous. The unvarnished truth is that after three sf novels with successively decreasing sales, I was officially in what is known as the dreaded Death Spiral. This is a thing that happens where your first book comes out and everybody's really jazzed about it and the buyers for the book stores buy x number of copies for each store and something like x-2 copies sell. Well, when your next book comes out, that buyer only orders x-2 copies, and there's some unwritten law of the universe that one or two copies of a book always go unsold. So your second books sells x-2-2 copies, and then your third book comes out and the buyers order x-2-2... You see where this is going. So the whole point of taking on a pseud for my YA books was to do an end-run around the Death Spiral and get Libyrinth ordered as if it were a promising debut novel by a new YA author. Ahem. I'm happy to say it appears to have worked.

As to the origins of Pearl North, here's what happened. There was a delay between the time when my editor said he would buy the Libyrinth books -- and he insisted it be a trilogy, not the single novel I'd originally planned -- and when the contract actually arrived. When it did come, I was on vacation in Northern Michigan, at my favorite place in the whole world, Pearl Lake. My agent called with the news, and she needed my pseudonym for the contract, so I had to decide on something in like, an hour. All I could think of was that I was up north, at Pearl Lake. And that's how Pearl North came into being.

Libyrinth came out in 2009, The Boy From Ilysies just came out Nov. 9 of this year, and the third Libyrinth book, The Book of the Night, is forthcoming in 2011.

“Libyrinth isn’t timid or polite. There is pain, there is death, there is consequence, and there is reality. But there is also joy, great adventure, and grace. It’s a strangely timely novel that will leave young (and not so young) readers wondering about their iPods and books. This is good YA.” —Nnedi Okorafor, author of The Shadow Speaker

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

I am happy to finally announce that Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction has been picked up by Headline Books, Inc.. This is the writing guide that Mike Arnzen and I are co-editing.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I knew my article "Almost There" was going to be in the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of The PennWriter, the official publication of Pennwriters Inc., but I was excited to see it was on the first page.

This article sums up my frustration at being an in-betweener, someone who has taken the workshops, sorted through the writing advice, written my million words and then some, and watched my peers attain a certain success (in novel writing) while I wait in limbo. More importantly, it shares how I have accepted this fact and simply moved on with my writing and am happier because of it.

I quoted some wonderful words of advice in "Almost There" from my first Seton Hill mentor, Tom Monteleone. He told me, "...This business is mostly luck. Sometimes good writers don't become successful: sometimes bad writers do. If you like to write, then write the best story you can and at the end of the year, if nothing else, you have a book you want to read."

You know what I liked about that? He didn't try to pump me up with sunshine, tell me to keep at it, work harder, chin up.

Blah! When someone says that to me, all I hear is the implication that my three-four hours a day isn't really hard work and that they got where they are because they wanted it more. I'm sure not all of them mean that, but it can be difficult to relate to someone at the bottom of the ladder when you're already at the top.

I like Tom's words better because they helped me understand why I write - not because it will make me rich or famous, but because I like to tell stories. (Something Mike Resnick reminded me of during a casual conversation at a convention. I'm sure you don't remember that, Mike, but thank you.)

Maybe some of my Irish luck will come to the surface and you'll be able to read a couple of those shelved novels one day. Then again, maybe I could do something I would have never considered even six months ago - make my own luck like J. A. Konrath (who happened to be on the panel I moderated which spurred this little article) and David Morrell have...I'm not kidding.

Thank you to Jason Jack Miller for taking all of the photos; that way I could just enjoy everything, but still have photographic stock later.

FRIDAYThis photo was taken on Friday, October 29, but The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority counted 825,437 passenger trips on October 30, the date of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, breaking a 19-year record.

Before heading home, we stopped at the American Indian Museum to see the changing exhibits and catch a show for Dia de los Muertos.

A Final Note
In closing, I'll post part of Jon Stewart's closing speech because it was so inspiring and so...sane:

"I can't control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

Unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country's 24-hour politico pundit panic conflict-onator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems and illuminate problems heretofore unseen, or it can use its magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous-flaming-ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rich Sanchez is an insult -- not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.

The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything we eventually get sicker. And perhaps eczema. Yet, with that being said, I feel good. Strangely, calmly good, because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller -- but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is -- on the brink of catastrophe -- torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don't is here or on cable TV. Americans don't live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.

Most Americans don't live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals. Most Americans live their lives that our just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often it’s something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things get done every day that are only made possible by the little, reasonable compromises...

...Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. You’re presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you."

NEWS Man of War

BOOKS I can't tell you what an honor it is to write a sequel to a Science Fiction Grandmaster's novel. Thank you to Meteor House a...

NEWS Starrie in Publishers Weekly

Nice review from Publisher's Weekly for Starrie (From the World of Ambasadora)!
"Miller’s short third novel in the space-faring, caste-bound, hierarchically polyamorous, and socially striated Ambasadora universe (after 2013’s Greenshift) manages to balance the exoticized presentation of the setting with relatable human interaction...the romance between Ben and Naela highlights the emotional side of reaching out to those who are different from you, even in a world where those differences are stylized and codified."

TALKING ABOUT MAN OF WAR

"More than just demonstrating how the best science fiction thrills with action, and explores romance in new and unexpected ways, Heidi Ruby Miller gives us something equally important -- representation, through an exploration of Farmer's classic Iroquois character Two Hawks. Anyone interested in page-turners with diversity should stop what they're doing and read Man of War." -John Edward Lawson, Bram Stoker Award finalist and author of Bibliophobia

TALKING ABOUT THE AMBASADORA SERIES

"AMBASADORA has a lot to say about the human spirit and it says it well." -MIKE RESNICK Nebula and Hugo Award-winning Author of the Santiago series

TALKING ABOUT STARRIE

"Miller’s short third novel in the space-faring, caste-bound, hierarchically polyamorous, and socially striated Ambasadora universe (after 2013’s Greenshift) manages to balance the exoticized presentation of the setting with relatable human interaction...the romance between Ben and Naela highlights the emotional side of reaching out to those who are different from you, even in a world where those differences are stylized and codified." -Publisher's Weekly

TALKING ABOUT MANY GENRES

"...a beautiful and insightful must-have book for any writer, from newbie to working pro. Highly recommended!" -JONATHAN MABERRY NYT Bestselling Author of the Joe Ledger series

TALKING ABOUT STARRIE

"STARRIE is one ripping fast book and a well told story. I loved it!" --Basil Sands, The Big Thrill

TALKING ABOUT HEIDI'S WRITING

"...a writer-crush on Heidi Ruby Miller. I mean, holy crap, this girl can write! This is how you write Science-Fiction." -CARY CAFFREY Bestselling Author of The Girls from Alcyone trilogy

TALKING ABOUT GREENSHIFT

TALKING ABOUT STARRIE

"Take authentic, straight-ahead space opera. Stir in a highly trained, kick-ass assassin on a mission of vengeance. Toss in a career soldier and watch them battle together, and grow together, as adversity piles on. Serve hot! Heidi Ruby Miller’s STARRIE serves up the perfect concoction of nonstop, take-no-prisoners SF action and romance, set against the intriguing backdrop of the brutal and dangerous world of AMBASADORA, and deftly leaves us wanting more." -Win Scott Eckert, coauthor with Philip José Farmer of The Evil in Pemberley House and author of The Scarlet Jaguar, winner of the 2014 New Pulp Award

TALKING ABOUT MARKED BY LIGHT

"Talk about an outlaw hero that is larger than life. Talk about a hero who changes worlds." -JENNA BENNET NYT Bestselling Author of The Fortune series

TALKING ABOUT HEIDI'S STORIES

TALKING ABOUT STARRIE

"With explosive action, kick-ass heroes and romance that hits all the right notes, STARRIE gives fans of science fiction romance everything they want—at a breakneck pace. Plan to stay up all night finishing this one, it’s impossible to put down!" - RHONDA MASON Author of The Empress Game